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Geico gets XtraNormal’d

So what do we have here. Crappy animation, voice acting and dialogue. Even a crappy punchline. I thought this was a joke until I saw the ‘GEICO’ logo at the end.

The humor seems backwards for a Geico commercial. They typically rely on injecting something really bizarre into a seemingly normal situation. This spot does the opposite, featuring a seemingly normal conversation in a bizarre, oddly low-production superhero cartoon. To be honest, I expected this more from Esurance or freecreditreport.com than from Geico.

They are really just latching on to an internet trend here: xtranormal.com allows users to create videos from nothing but a script. For free.

In a way, I think they are poking fun at themselves. Many companies spend waaay too much money on videos that they expect to explode in popularity on the internet. Instead, Geico used a goofy, free online service to create an ad for TV.

I like the idea, honestly. The dialogue is cute up until the super power talk, but the punchline really did not do it for me. Even though the video takes 15 minutes to publish, you should still at least storyboard first.

And another thing – this Geico spot probably cost somewhere around $0 to produce. That seems like a win for everyone, right?